I Don't Like Dishonesty

Dishonesty is something that I particularly dislike. There are two different levels of dishonesty though:

1. Deliberate untruth (either in the form of the negation of what is actual, or by omission of critical points that would make what is stated a negation of what is actual); or
2. Incidental untruth (the responder replies with a statement of untruth only because it is a technically correct statement with respect to the question that was posed to him/her).

The difference between the first and second lies in the intent. If I were the person asking for something, then an incidental untruth is on me---I should have asked better questions that would allow the technically correct statement to encompass the actual situation instead of allowing the possibility of such an untruth from showing. This can usually be done by asking simply, and following up with more questions of clarity.

Deliberate untruth is what I dislike the most, and reflects poorly on the responder than the incidental one. Because the responder was faced with an array of choices to respond, and yet he/she still chose to say things that did not reflect what is actual. It is even worse when the deliberate untruth is from an unprovoked assertion.

I'm bringing this up here because I was reminded by a recent post on ye olde Reddit about how some self-proclaimed evangelists chose to use dishonest deception to con people into seeking the Lord (a classic example being stiffing a waiter of their tips by putting a fake bill that claims that the Lord is worth more than the tip). Their actions also remind me of a personal experience from someone from the past that pulled a similar act on me, and was one of the many reasons why I had declared on occasion that I had no issues with God, but have some issues with some of His followers.

Further reflection too have brought up other occasions where the said person was also the first to break the cooperation parity at some team building event thing.

Hmmm. A pattern?

Maybe. Who knows?

The main point here is that evangelism using deception isn't likely what the Lord wants us to do in His Great Commission. Secularly speaking, the ends may be worth it, but the means are what people tend to learn from, imitate, and eventually codify into either a standard operating procedure, a precedent, or even a culture.

Screwing up the means to get to the ends is a great way towards disaster. It also ends with a non-reproducible process, since (in this case) a consistently deceptive means of evangelism will eventually raise serious doubts of integrity on these so-called Christians about who they alleged are following: is it really worth it to be ``saved'' by a Master whose disciples practise such low integrity stunts?

Is it really denying oneself and taking one's cross daily when we resort to trickery to spread the Lord's word? Would the Lord approve?

I'm not even trying to be sanctimonious---I'm not worthy enough. It's just infuriating that people think that the ends justify the means, as though the means mean nothing. This is not just in the world of evangelism though... the recent trends in activism has a similar sort of modus operandi too.

The encouragement of violence, the loud calls of ignoring someone only because they are not in the in-group despite them having points that ought to be addressed, the waving of old ideas that had been tried and shown to be inappropriate and unworking as though they are the new panacea whilst shouting down any and all opposition, the call for a tit-for-tat response to everything.

It's honestly quite depressing to see it all happen.

How much of it is due to the intellectual lazy just sticking to their echo chambers, and how much of it is from external misinformation campaigns will be something that future scientists will have a ``fun'' time digging through and making sense of it all, assuming that they can even retrieve all the information that had happened in the first place. All these digital data are more fragile and old school stone tablets, and already digital archivists are complaining about the inability to retrieve data from just 30 years ago, let alone 100.

I mean, have you even seen a working 3 1/2″ floppy disk drive? Those were ubiquitous; now they are basically extinct for all purposes and intent. And these days we have even more complex storage systems, both in terms of hardware (all the crazy standards for flash storage and their associated controllers with USB for example) and software (cloud storage). Digital archaeology is going to be a ``fun'' field to be in.

But back to dishonesty. I don't like it. It's wrong. There are often better ways to present things to people to garner their interest---if you know that they aren't going to be interested, then don't force your way, especially if forcing your way requires the use of dishonest behaviours.

Especially for evangelism. Imagine being on the receiving end. What would they think about the Master if you, the self-proclaimed disciple, used such dishonest means to attempt to communicate the Master's teachings to them?

Does it reflect well upon the Master? Does it reflect well upon His teachings? Does it reflect well upon God's plan of salvation?

Or does it seem more like a cult of dishonest and greedy humans who are following some unspecial ``deity'' who is more like a cultish personality instead of the one and only God?

I'm preaching to the void here, because I'm really just venting, but you get the idea.

I believe that in the end, the truth can stand on its own without having to resort to dishonesty, no matter what kind of truth we are talking about. If one really needs dishonesty to get the truth across, then either the truth is really a sham, or it just shows that one is a terrible person that should not be trusted.

That's the rant for now. Till the next update.